


My True Love Gave to Me

by DelightfullyDifficult



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Swan January Joy 2020 (Once Upon a Time), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22516258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelightfullyDifficult/pseuds/DelightfullyDifficult
Summary: Emma Swan does not do Christmas.  Nope. Not at all.  But this year, it doesn't seem she has much of a choice in the matter when her neighbor surreptitiously decorates her apartment.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	My True Love Gave to Me

**Author's Note:**

> This began life as a Secret Santa gift, but I had to abandon it halfway through when my first giftee went AWOL and it didn’t fit the desires of my new giftee. However, I really enjoyed this story and decided to finish it as my entry for this year’s csjanuaryjoy! Thank you so much, mods, for organizing this event and facilitating all the joy! This a small, Christmas-time, neighbors AU and I hope you enjoy!

Emma Swan knew that she tended to be a bit of a Grinch during the holiday season. She’d spent too many Christmases watching happy families celebrating while whatever foster family she was with barely acknowledged her existence with gifts of second-hand clothes to develop the warm, fuzzy feelings people associated with the season. Not all of the families were like that, of course, but few had bothered to put real effort into presents. Only Ingrid, the woman who had tried desperately to adopt Emma but was denied by the state, had ever given her gifts that really meant anything when she was young.

She spent Christmas with her chosen family of friends now and had received a plethora of thoughtful gifts, but she still hadn’t been able to bring herself to really care about the holiday.

Given her general disregard for winter festivities, it was quite a shock to come home one day and find that her apartment, in which she lived alone, looked like the Christmas aisle of a department store had exploded inside of it.

Soft blue lights twinkled in her windows and garland hung from almost every available shelf or ledge. The side table by her front door now sported a festive red and green quilted runner and a reindeer shaped dish held the miscellaneous change and spare key that usually were strewn haphazardly on the table’s surface. With a sigh, she dropped her keyring with the others.

Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, Emma proceeded into her home. A tree, an honest to god real tree, now dominated one corner of her living room. Gold tinsel and bright, colorful lights wrapped around it and simple round ornaments of red and silver hung from the branches. Her heart dropped, just a little, when she saw that there were no gifts piled underneath.

There was, however, a nutcracker sitting on her coffee table, and a small cat asleep on the back of her couch. 

“Killian, you asshole,” Emma growled. The cat’s presence revealed the identity of the orchestrator behind the home makeover.

Now awake, the cat, a lovely calico named Tinkerbelle, stood, stretched, and jumped off the couch to rub herself against Emma’s ankles. 

“Tink, did you help your owner with this… this… travesty?”

The cat just stretched and rubbed herself against Emma’s pant legs. With a chuckle, Emma lifted the interloper and settled her against her chest. That elicited a loud purr and a head-butt against her chin. 

Tinkerbelle belonged to Emma’s upstairs neighbor and friend, Killian Jones. The day he’d moved into the third floor, Tink had shown her displeasure at the move and escaped. Emma, just home from grocery shopping, heard a very irate “Bloody hell!” echo down the stairwell before a small ball of fur ran right into the bags she had set down on the landing in order to unlock her apartment door. After a quick scramble and a few scratches, Emma had extracted Tinkerbelle from the bags just as a sweaty man came bounding down the stairs after her.

Emma held out the hissing cat as she asked, “does this belong to you?”

“Aye, that she does.” With a sigh, he had taken the pissed off cat and held her firmly against himself with one arm. The other he held out as he introduced himself as Killian Jones, her new neighbor.

“Emma Swan.” She shook his offered hand.

She’d stared in shock as he lifted her hand and placed a quick kiss on the knuckles. 

“You have my thanks, Emma, for your assistance. May I offer you an IOU for a drink, for some time in the future after I have unpacked?”

Emma blinked before finally replying, “That isn’t necessary.”

“Maybe not, but the offer is open. I will let you know when my apartment is fit for company.” With that, Killian had made his way back up the stairs and Emma had to scold herself for admiring the way his jeans hugged his backside. The man had just moved in; she shouldn’t be ogling him like a teenager. Even if his accent sent shivers down her back.

Eventually she’d taken Killian up on his offer of a drink. That had led to more drinks, casual dinners, and nearly three years later, Emma considered him one of her closest friends. He was the one that had her spare key and watched over her apartment when her work as a bail bondsman took her out of town. A trust she was now rethinking since he’d apparently used the privilege to infest her apartment with holiday cheer.

Emma cuddled Tink as she wandered her apartment. The kitchen wasn’t too bad; a few towels decorated with snowflakes and a snowman shaped cookie jar were the only new additions she could see. The guest bathroom, however, nearly burnt her eyes with how much red and green was packed into the small space. There was a new Santa toilet cover with a matching bathmat. The hand towels looked like the bottom halves of elves and her simple soap dispenser had been replaced with a Christmas tree one. 

Blessedly, her bedroom and attached bathroom had been spared the Christmas invasion. Killian obviously knew better than to mess with her private space. 

Tinkerbelle jumping from her arms and Emma heard the squeak of her front door’s hinges. The culprit returning to the scene of the crime, she thought, as she heard Killian chuckle when Tink greeted him with a meow that seem far too loud to have come from the cat.

“I know, it’s time for dinner,” she heard Killian matter-of-factly tell Tink. “I just need to add the finishing touch to the tree.”

Realizing Killian didn’t know she was home, Emma toed off her shoes and softly walked to spy out the bedroom door. Wanting to remain hidden, she used the reflection in her TV to watch Killian. He had a simple box, which he laid on her coffee table. Whatever item he pulled out was too blurry to make out clearly, but she surmised it was some time of tree topper as he stretched to reach the top of the tree. She risked a real look as he fiddled around behind the tree a bit and saw that it was a gold star. She swiftly ducked back into her room when it illuminated, Killian having finished plugging it in.

“There,” she listened to him say. Tink meowed in reply.

“Alright, fine. Let’s get you some food.” With that, Killian collected the empty box, scooped up his cat, and left her apartment, locking the door behind him.

Once he was gone, Emma stood in her living room and gazed at the tree. It was, she realized, the first Christmas tree she’d ever had. That thought immediately brought tears to Emma’s eyes, which she roughly wiped away. She didn’t need a tree; especially not one that was going to shed pine needles all over her floor for the next few weeks.

Later that night, when Emma went to turn off the lights before heading to bed, she couldn’t help but admire how lovely it looked in the dark room. As she lay in bed, she sent a text to Killian. 

_Thank you._

~*~

Three days later, Emma noticed that the Christmas tree in her living room had gained some ornaments. Where before there had only been classic glass bulbs, there were now wooden figures nestled amongst the branches. All of them were birds of some type, which Emma found odd.

Three looked like chickens. Four were small, dark birds. Two were obviously doves and the last was an odd looking bird with stripes on its wings that had a pear dangling by the stem from its mouth. 

Emma held the pear-holding bird that she had found near the top of the tree in her hand. Something about the bird felt familiar but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It wasn’t until she was placing it back in the tree that the answer hit her like a ton of bricks.

It was a partridge. Holding a pear…

A partridge in a pear tree… well, a pine tree, but the connection was there.

Two turtle doves. Three French hens.

And a quick google told her that the fourth gift in the 12 Days of Christmas song was either “calling” or “colly” birds, deepening on the version, and that colly was believed to refer to blackbirds, which were dark like “col”, the Old English word for coal.

Leave it to Killian, an English Literature professor, to give her a gift that involved Old English.

Pulling her phone out, Emma autodialed Killian’s number.

“Evening, love,” he answered.

“If you keep breaking into my apartment, I’m going to make sure that Santa leaves only _col_ in your stocking.” She put extra emphasis on the word col.

She could hear him laughing in the apartment above her.

~*~

As expected, Killian did not stop adding more decorations to the Christmas tree. The next day brought five gold painted rings, followed by six geese with eggs. 

On the seventh day, Emma found more than just seven wooden swans a-swimming on her tree after returning home. A new picture frame adorned her wall, containing a collage of pictures of Emma herself swimming. Or at least interacting with water. She didn’t think that sitting on the side of the pool with only her feet in the water really counted as swimming. Most were from that summer, when Killian had been her plus-one at a friend’s wedding in Cape Cod.

In one, which she couldn’t remember seeing before, she was “manning the helm” of a sail boat with Killian standing behind her, his hands on hers. Killian had insisted on renting a small sailboat while they were out of the city so that he could show her the joy of sailing. Emma smiled as she remembered how he’d gently guided her movements and ensured she didn’t kill everyone on board.

Well, he was supposed to be keeping an eye out for any possible dangers, but in this specific photo, Killian wasn’t looking at the waters around them. Instead, his attention seemed to be solely on herself. He was smiling, but it was… different. It seemed softer, somehow. In fact, his entire expression reminded her of the ones she usually saw on the face of her best friend’s husband, David, when he was in awe by how much he loved the woman before him.

Emma stepped away from the picture, her heart pounding. She had to be reading too much into a simple facial expression. There was no way Killian was in love with her. He would have told her if he was. Probably with a poem.

Or by breaking into her apartment and recreating an old Christmas carol.

“On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me…” Emma sang softly to herself.

Before she could stop herself, Emma ran upstairs to Killian’s apartment. It was only when Killian open the door in response to her insistent knock that she realized she had no idea what she was going to do. So she did the first thing that came to mind, which was to grab fistfuls of his shirt, drag him toward her, and hope the kiss she gave him conveyed what she couldn’t put into words.

He responded instantly. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her flush against him. She followed when he began to slowly step back into his apartment, only to find herself pressed against the door moments after it was closed. Emma couldn’t help running her hands through Killian’s impossibly soft hair as the kiss deepened. 

It was Killian who managed to regain control of himself first, pulling away from the kiss and resting his head against hers.

“Emma… I…” he began.

Emma smiled. “I know.”


End file.
